Indiana lawmakers have days to decide whether to keep certain contentious bills alive during this legislative session, including
one that would extend civil rights protections to gays and lesbians, but not transgender people, one that would use a tax
increase to fund road improvements and one that would further restrict the sale of cold medicines used to make methamphetamine.

A Senate committee on Wednesday narrowly advanced a bill that would extend civil rights protections to gay and lesbian Hoosiers
but punt the issue of transgender discrimination to a summer study committee, as well as offer religious exemptions for clergy
and other groups.

Since the Probate Code Study Commission was eliminated as part of a 2014 law that reduced the number of interim study committees,
certain legislators and attorneys have mounted an effort to get the commission reinstated.

Concerns from the disparate treatment of minorities who police find in possession of firearms to the threat of domestic violence
weighed against two proposals in the Legislature to expand who the state should permit to carry handguns, and where.

A bias-motivated crimes bill authored by a northern Indiana legislator was approved by a Senate committee Tuesday, the only
one of six such bills to have received a hearing so far this legislative session.

A proposal to raise caps on medical malpractice damages by $400,000 appears to face a grim prognosis after a key lawmaker
said parties to the legislation have failed to agree on certain provisions of the bill.

An Indiana legislator is scaling back his proposal to require a doctor's prescription to buy cold medicines that contain
pseudoephedrine as lawmakers look for ways to prevent methamphetamine makers from obtaining the drug.

A proposal to raise the cap on medical malpractice damages by $400,000, index future increases to inflation and make other
reforms to the Indiana Medical Malpractice Act will be introduced to a Senate committee Monday.

Indiana General Assembly staff members would be allowed to carry handguns inside the state Capitol under a bill recommended
for passage on a party-line vote Wednesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Indiana lawmakers are poised to add bighorn sheep and exotic mountain goats to the kinds of animals the state sanctions to
be shot by hunters in high-fence enclosures not regulated by the Department of Natural Resources.

A new proposal to lift Indiana's eight decades-old ban on Sunday carryout alcohol sales would impose fewer new restrictions
on grocery stores and pharmacies than a bill that failed in the Legislature last year.